As news from Washington and Wall Street slows down this time of year, media networks begin producing annual recaps and, like fortunetellers, being predicting what might occur in the next twelve months. Their forecasts come in all shapes and sizes too. For example, did you know that Forbes believes that Tampa Bay will win the World Series and the Huffington Post prognosticates that Snooki will get married in 2014?

At Netop, we’re suckers for any predictions related to technology – be it hardware, software, security, mobile or web applications etc. So, as you might expect, when Techday produced its Top 13 Cyber Security predictions for 2014, they had us pretty quickly. It turns out, a few of their predictions hit close to home.

On a traditional front for Netop, it is believed that organizations will need to exert more control over remote access tools, since many commonly used remote access tools have been used to attack networks. We are well aware how these solutions can be used maliciously if proper checks and balances are not in place. With our enterprise solution, Netop Remote Control, we have helped companies deploy secure remote access strategies for nearly 30 years. If you are concerned about remote access tools being used as gateway to attack your company’s assets, we need to talk!

Another one of Techday’s predictions concerns attacks on industrial control systems. An afterthought by many companies, HVAC, cooling and other automated systems – if left unchecked – present security threats to an organization’s entire IT infrastructure. We are not surprised to see this make Techday’s list as there has been an uptick in news about attacks on industrial control systems in 2013. This is also an area we’ve been working to address and we have several related announcements planned for early next year.